He then outlines the constitutional framework that is needed to put these principles into practice. In a new afterword to this second edition, Barnett elaborates on this thesis by responding to several important criticisms of the original work. In this book, legal scholar randy barnett elaborates and defends the fundamental premise of the Declaration of Independence: that all persons have a natural right to pursue happiness so long as they respect the equal rights of others, and that governments are only justly established to secure these rights.
Drawing upon insights from philosophy, when people pursue happiness while living in society with each other, they confront the pervasive social problems of knowledge, and law, Barnett explains why, economics, political theory, interest and power.
Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People
Eventually, the courts complied. Drawing from his deep knowledge of constitutional law and history, as well as his experience litigating on behalf of medical marijuana and against Obamacare, Barnett explains why “We the People” would greatly benefit from the renewal of our Republican Constitution, and how this can be accomplished in the courts and the political arena.
Barnett tells the fascinating story of how this debate arose shortly after the Revolution, leading to the adoption of a new and innovative “republican” constitution; and how the struggle over slavery led to its completion by a newly formed Republican Party. Yet soon thereafter, progressive academics and activists urged the courts to remake our Republican Constitution into a democratic one by ignoring key passes of its text.
A concise history of the long struggle between two fundamentally opposing constitutional traditions, from one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars—a manifesto for renewing our constitutional republic. The constitution of the United States begins with the words: “We the People. But from the earliest days of the american republic, there have been two competing notions of “the People, ” which lead to two very different visions of the Constitution.
Those who view “we the people” collectively think popular sovereignty resides in the people as a group, which leads them to favor a “democratic” constitution that allows the “will of the people” to be expressed by majority rule.
Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty
This updated edition features an afterword with further reflections on individual popular sovereignty, originalist interpretation, judicial engagement, and the gravitational force that original meaning has exerted on the Supreme Court in several recent cases. Broadside Books. In the process, the written Constitution has been lost.
The U. S. Barnett establishes the original meaning of these lost clauses and offers a practical way to restore them to their central role in constraining government: adopting a "presumption of liberty" to give the benefit of the doubt to citizens when laws restrict their rightful exercises of liberty. In restoring the lost constitution, but especially since the 1930s, Randy Barnett argues that since the nation's founding, the courts have been cutting holes in the original Constitution and its amendments to eliminate the parts that protect liberty from the power of government.
. Constitution found in school textbooks and under glass in Washington is not the one enforced today by the Supreme Court. From the commerce clause, to the ninth and tenth amendments, to the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, to the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Supreme Court has rendered each of these provisions toothless.
As clearly argued as it is insightful and provocative, Restoring the Lost Constitution forcefully disputes the conventional wisdom, posing a powerful challenge to which others must now respond.
The Political Theory of the American Founding: Natural Rights, Public Policy, And The Moral Conditions Of Freedom
West argues that, on the contrary, the foundational documents overwhelmingly point to natural rights as the lens through which all politics is understood. Broadside Books. Cambridge university press. The book explores in depth how the Founders' supposedly republican policies on citizen character formation do not contradict but instead complement their liberal policies on property and economics.
This book provides a complete overview of the American Founders' political theory, consent, covering natural rights, social compact, natural law, state of nature, and the policy implications of these ideas.
The Libertarian Reader: Classic & Contemporary Writings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman
Broadside Books. The most magnificent collection of libertarian writings ever published” Laissez Faire Books. An important collection of seminal writings on a movement that is rapidly changing the face of American politics, The Libertarian Reader links some of the most fertile minds of our time to a centuries-old commitment to freedom, self-determination, and opposition to intrusive government.
Cambridge university press. Simon Schuster. The 68 selections from great libertarian writers are an intellectual feast, spontaneous order, free markets, individual rights, covering such key libertarian themes as skepticism about power, and peace.
A Great Power of Attorney: Understanding the Fiduciary Constitution
. The founding generation often spoke of the Constitution as a fiduciary document—or as a “great power of attorney, ” in the words of founding-era legal giant James Iredell. Simon Schuster. Broadside Books. Viewed against the background of fiduciary legal and political theory, the Constitution is best read as granting limited powers to the national government, which would have been familiar to the founding generation from both its education and its experience, as an agent, to manage some portion of the affairs of “We the People” and its “posterity.
What follows from this particular conception of the constitution—and is of greater importance—is the question of whether, and how much and in what ways, the discretion of governmental agents in exercising those constitutionally granted powers is also limited by background norms of fiduciary obligation.
What kind of document is the united states Constitution and how does that characterization affect its meaning? Those questions are seemingly foundational for the entire enterprise of constitutional theory, but they are strangely under-examined. Legal scholars gary lawson and guy Seidman propose that the Constitution, or agency, for purposes of interpretation, is a kind of fiduciary, instrument.
The Law
Broadside Books.
The Most Dangerous Branch: Inside the Supreme Court's Assault on the Constitution
. Gore to citizens united, to rulings during the 2017-18 term. David A. The next justice—replacing Anthony Kennedy—will be even more important, holding the swing vote over so much social policy. Broadside Books. Kaplan, the former legal affairs editor of Newsweek, shows how the justices subvert the role of the other branches of government—and how we’ve come to accept it at our peril.
Wade to Bush v. Donald trump picked Neil Gorsuch—the key decision of his new administration. With the retirement of justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court has never before been more central in American life. But the arrogance of the Court isn’t partisan: Conservative and liberal justices alike are guilty of overreach.
Is that really how democracy is supposed to work? based on exclusive interviews with the justices and dozens of their law clerks, Kaplan provides fresh details about life behind the scenes at the Court – Clarence Thomas’s simmering rage, Breyer Bingo, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s celebrity, the petty feuding between Gorsuch and the chief justice, Antonin Scalia’s death, and what John Roberts thinks of his critics.
The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek
Striking a balance between skepticism and hope, Hayek’s profound insights are timelier and more welcome than ever before. Simon Schuster. The book is considered hayek’s classic statement on the ideals of freedom and liberty, ideals that he believes have guided—and must continue to guide—the growth of Western civilization.
The latest entry in the university of chicago press’s series of newly edited editions of Hayek’s works, like Serfdom, The Constitution of Liberty is, just as relevant to our present moment. From the $700 billion bailout of the banking industry to president Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package to the highly controversial passage of federal health-care reform, conservatives and concerned citizens alike have grown increasingly fearful of big government.
Cambridge university press. Hayek, whose passionate warning against empowering states with greater economic control, The Road to Serfdom, became an overnight sensation last summer when it was endorsed by Glenn Beck. Enter nobel prize–winning economist and political theorist F. Broadside Books.
The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom
Two long wars, the growth of executive power under presidents bush and Obama, chronic deficits, the campaigns of Ron Paul and Rand Paul, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, and the revelations about NSA abuses have pushed millions more Americans in a libertarian direction. Cambridge university press.
A revised, updated, and retitled edition of david boaz’s classic book libertarianism: A Primer, which was praised as uniting “history, philosophy, economics and law—spiced with just the right anecdotes—to bring alive a vital tradition of American political thought that deserves to be honored today” Richard A.
. Epstein, University of Chicago. Libertarianism—the philosophy of personal and economic freedom—has deep roots in Western civilization and in American history, and it’s growing stronger. The libertarian Mind is the ultimate resource for the current, burgeoning libertarian movement. Broadside Books.
51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law
The book corrects this omission by looking at each issue-and some others as well-through the lens of many constitutions, not one constitution; of many courts, not one court; and of all American judges, not federal or state judges. When we think of constitutional law, we invariably think of the United States Supreme Court and the federal court system.
Simon Schuster. University of Chicago Press. But these explanations tell just part of the story. If there is a central conviction of the book, it's that an underappreciation of state constitutional law has hurt state and federal law and has undermined the appropriate balance between state and federal courts in protecting individual liberty.
Court of appeals Judge Jeffrey S. Simon Schuster.